Michigan police receive training to recognize mental illness

“I realized that I can’t change the situation that we’re in. I can’t change milk prices. I can’t stop farms from going bankrupt. But I can change how we are. And we are together, and that really does matter,” said dairy farmer Brenda Rudolph during the workshop, according to a report from the St. Cloud Times, which is part of the USA Today network.

“There is a conversation you people have to have in America, rural America, that says, depression is part of your life. It is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of reality,” said Dennis Hoiberg, a farming consultant based in Australia who spoke at the workshop. He added that, from his perspective, the United States still tends to be more repressed about mental health issues than elsewhere in the world – with the focus on stress and not on resiliency.

“Most of you folk are proud folk, and most you folk are very proud of what you do,” Mr. Hoiberg said. “You’re also psychologically exposed because you are a true believer [in what you do].”

Advice offered to lessen the tough times included noticing the beauty in the world, breaking down problems into small chunks that are more easily dealt with and then moving on to the next, sleep, and a good diet.

People with mental illness languishing

Public defenders in Colorado are seeking to have dozens of people diagnosed with mental illness who are in jail awaiting trial set free until their court date. The usual scenario in Colorado for someone charged with a crime and jailed who is deemed mentally incompetent is treatment within 28 days. However, this system is broken and wait times are far longer – in one instance 270 days.

“Many of them are there for very, very low level offenses and they’re holding in jail for way longer than a person who did not suffer from mental illness would be in custody,” said Maureen Cain, policy liaison for the public defender’s office in an interview with the Denver Post. “They are being incarcerated for their mental illness, not really because of the crime they committed.” Responses from judges have ranged from immediate release to finding the incarcerated person guilty of contempt and sending them back to jail.

The Colorado Department of Human Services is in charge of people who have been jailed but have been found to be incompetent to stand trial. Officials there have say they do not have enough bed space or capacity to get people moved out of jail within 28 days.

“We are in a situation where [the human services department] is in breach, and I need to know what efforts are being made to bring it back into compliance,” said federal Judge Nina Y. Wang. “These individuals are not being served, and frankly, the state is not being served.”

“Cruel” practice confined youth

A federal class action lawsuit filed against the Departmental of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in the Chicago area alleges that, from 2015 to 2017, more than 800 youth were being confined to psychiatric hospitals even when they were cleared for discharge. The problem goes back decades and is getting worse, the lawsuit contends.